Lanzarote Convention

06.09.2011 - Storing
child sexual abuse images is not a crime in Russia.
Russian laws protecting children’s rights are still not
strong enough.

According to statistics and analyses available, the USA
and Russia are the leading countries for distributing
and disseminating child sexual abuse images. Sexual
abuse for the purpose of producing child sexual abuse
images involves not only perpetrators from Russia, but
many other actors from the international criminal chains
and networks also play a role.

Children may be exploited in several ways in the
development of child sexual abuse materials and actions
towards putting a halt to this have, of late, been
seriously examined.

Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s Children Rights Commissioner
has called for urgent measures to protect children from
sexual abuse. Astakhov said it is important to speed up
the adoption of a law that increases the punishment for
sex crimes against children.“Until Russia creates
adequate legislation to protect children from
paedophilia and pornography and bans the advertisement
of those obnoxious things on the Internet which
stimulate sexual encroachments against children, such
cases will continue”.

Russia’s efforts to tackle issues related to this topic
have so far included Bilateral Cooperation for the
Adoption of Children between Russia and the USA,
ratification of the Child Abduction Convention as well
as raising-awareness of behaviour on the Internet (instigated
by the Safe Internet League).